AUGQSTINE OF HIPPO qua PATRIOT 
Robert K. Richardson 
Historians differ widely as to St. Augustine’s attitude toward 
his country and its misfortunes at the opening of the fifth century 
after Christ. Some consider him so devoted to the Heavenly City 
as to be indifferent to the sufferings of the Temporal City. Others 
discover in him a sorrowing patriot of the usual and accepted 
pattern. An intermediate view is that represented by Dr. Angus 
in his valuable work, The Sources of the First Ten Books of Au- 
gustine^s Be Civitate Dei. Dr. Angus holds that: ‘‘So far as the 
testimony of Augustine’s writings is concerned, his attitude to the 
fall of Rome and the state of the Roman Empire of his day was 
neither of intense and deeply patriotic feeling, nor of heartless 
indifference, though nearer to the latter than to the former.” “To 
say the least,” continues Angus, “he appears surprisingly calm 
in the face of so terrible a calamity. Augustine’s pride in Rome 
was centered in her achievements of the past, not in her present. 
He was more of a Christian than a Roman. 
A study of Augustine’s letters and sermons, as well as of The 
City of Ood, directed to the relatively small point in question, but 
controlled by consideration of the broader matter of his general 
outlook on God and the World, suggests that an eclectic estimate 
of his position is closer to truth than any of the three views men¬ 
tioned. This estimate may be subsumed in four propositions: (1) 
Augustine was fond, even proud, of the Empire; (2) he took a 
lively interest in the fortunes of the state; (3) not considering the 
situation hopeless, he bewailed this situation less than had he been 
endowed with insight more prophetic; and (4) the character of 
his Neo-Platonic Christianity lent moderation of grief alike to 
his thought and to his rhetoric. 
Augustine was fond, even proud, of the Empire. 
It is not unnatural to regard Augustine’s attitude toward the 
Roman Empire as basically prejudiced by a theory that the state 
^ S. Angus, The Sources of the First Ten Books of Augustine’s De Civitate Dei. 1906. 
275. Gf. ibid., 64—75 for quotations representative of one or the other of the types of 
view mentioned in the text. 
